Paola Santiago and the Forest of Nightmares

by Tehlor Kay Mejia

In the place where Pao had twice seen her father in her dreams, down the hill from where she stood, was one of those shiny Airstream trailers. Parked beside it was a Toyota pickup that looked much older than Pao.

  None of that was out of the ordinary. Even the giant satellite-dish-like things on either end of the trailer, humming and whirring with energy, weren’t immediate cause for alarm.

  What made Pao’s jaw drop down to her sneakers was the seemingly sentient deep-purple cloud that hovered above the scene. When she peered closer, she saw that it was made up of writhing and undulating snakes of energy. It might as well have been wearing a T-shirt that said SOMETHING EVIL MADE ME!

  Somehow, she knew that her father was inside that trailer. And that all the answers to her questions were just a small slope and an aluminum door away from being answered.

  And so she ran right toward it, her heart pounding, her puppy at her heels.

  “Dad?” Pao knocked sharply on the door three times.

  No answer.

  “Dad, it’s me, Pao!”

  Nothing.

  Bruto whined, then scratched at the door with his massive paw.

  It opened outward, just a crack, like the latch hadn’t completely caught the last time it was closed, and Pao could hear quiet voices coming from inside. Men’s voices.

  “Not her,” one man said. “Another will come. Please, we’ll find a way, just let her go!”

  There was a strangling sound, and then: “But we’ve worked so hard, Beto. This is the last test. Pass this one, and you’ll finally be free. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Your freedom?”

  Beto, Pao thought, a thrill going through her. The boy her mother had known before her dad . . . What was he doing here? Was this her chance to find out if he was really La Llorona’s son? And if the pleading man was Beto, did that make the other man Pao’s father?

  “Isn’t it?” the second man asked again, and the sound of his voice made the hairs stand up on Pao’s arms. It was deep and a little sinister. Dangerous, Pao thought, like the shadowy figure that had ordered Dante around in her vision. That couldn’t be her father, could it?

  Reluctant to interrupt before she’d overheard more, Pao cautiously drew her staff, willing its glow to dim. A six-foot-long illuminated wand with a bladed end wasn’t the stealthiest weapon in the world, but she would have to make do.

  Bruto seemed to understand that silence was vital to their survival at this moment, because he stood noiselessly beside Pao, as tense as a taut bow string, waiting. . . .

  “Yes,” said Beto, his voice flatter now. Defeated. “That’s what I want.”

  “Then let’s answer the door, hmm? Let’s say hello to the intrepid Paola.”

  The door flew open before Pao could react, knocking her backward. She almost lost her footing and fell down the little fold-out steps, but she caught herself at the last second.

  It was like this, wobbling on one foot, her arms comically thrown out at her sides, that Paola Santiago saw her father in the flesh for the first time in ten years.

  He was tall and broad-shouldered, she noticed, taking in the sight of him almost hungrily. His hair was the same color as hers, and just as thick and wavy, but there was some gray at the temples. It was pushed back and disheveled, like he’d been running his hands through it.

  But his face . . . His face is what she’d most wanted to see. Her dreams had obscured it every time she got close enough. First, there were his eyes. Deep brown, like hers, while her mom’s were that hazel color everyone always commented on. There were crinkles at the corners like he spent a lot of time squinting into the sun.

  His nose was long and straight, nothing like Pao’s little rounded one, and his cheekbones were high and sharp. But his cheeks were full, obscuring his jawline in a way that made him seem kind. Soft, like a dad, and not just a guy living in a weird trailer in the middle of nowhere.

  “Hi,” Pao said after a long minute, finally steady on her feet. “I’m . . . Pao. Sorry—that’s stupid. You already know who I am, I guess. I just . . . haven’t . . .”

  Before she could splutter herself into silence, her dad stepped forward and hugged her. It was one of those long, parent-type hugs that magically makes you feel less sick or sad or lonely than you did before it started.

  She thought, standing there, that she could stay just like this for at least a year. Maybe ten of them, just to make up for lost time.

  But her father pulled away after a few seconds, almost like he’d received an electric shock. Pao, coming out of the minor trance that seeing him for the first time had caused, remembered the other voice she’d heard through the crack in the door. And the strange, swirling purple cloud above where they were standing. And the million things she had come here to ask this man, and all the people who were counting on her getting the answers they needed.

  “Look,” Pao said, trying to peer behind him without being obvious about it, “I wish I was just here to . . . you know, catch up, or whatever, but I actually have a lot of questions and not that much time, so—”

  He laughed, interrupting her, his demeanor changing subtly as Pao spoke. “Not much time?” he said. “I hope you don’t think you’re leaving now. Not when we’ve waited so long for you to get here.”

  She should have been happy that he wanted to see her, but his words sounded a little like a threat. And what did he mean, we? Was it really Beto inside? Her father was still blocking her view of the inside of the trailer.

  “I’m here because I have questions,” Pao said, sensing it was time to cut to the chase and wanting to give her dad the chance to prove that he was good, that he could help her.

  She took a deep breath. “Questions only you can answer,” she continued, while he looked on, seeming bemused if anything. “About why my friend’s . . . well, my ex-friend’s abuela is in some kind of coma, and why monsters and fantasmas have been stalking me since I left Silver Springs, and what . . . ?” Pao gestured overhead at the swirling purple mass that seemed to be drawing all the light and color from the forest into itself. “What that is, and—”

  “She’s so like you,” her father said to no one, interrupting her. And there was a definite change in his demeanor. His whole expression morphed, like someone was taking over his face, moving in behind it. Someone who held his eyebrows differently and enunciated his words more carefully and—

  “Stop,” her father said now, cutting off Pao’s observations. His face changed back, and his words lost some of their lacquer. “She won’t understand. We need to give her time to process.”

  That’s when Pao realized what was going on. She hadn’t heard two men conversing inside the trailer. It had only been this one. This one man who had clearly lived alone in the woods too long.

  “You know what?” Pao said, stepping backward off the steps, Bruto at her heels. “There’s something I need to do, just real fast, and then I’ll be back, okay?”

  The look on her father’s face—whichever version of himself he was—told her she wouldn’t be leaving no matter what feeble lie she told. She kept moving anyway, the feeling that she’d made an awful, awful mistake crashing over her like a tidal wave.

  Bruto’s hackles were up now, and he stood between Pao and her dad, growling. Across her dad’s face, the two sides of him appeared to be fighting for dominance.

  “She’s—” he said, nearly choking on the end of the word, struggling to keep speaking even as it was clear he was losing the battle.

  “We will not—” Overenunciated this time. Pao backed away farther while he was distracted, even as ownership of her father’s face changed again.

  “I know I said—”

  “Our agreement—”

  Pao had made it to the base of the slope, a good thirty feet from where her father stood waging war with himself. She put a knee to the ground and pulled Bruto in with one arm while she envisioned herself back with the Niños, and Emma, and her mom, regrouping, figuring out what to do next together. . . .

&nbs
p; “And I’ll find—” her father was saying, his voice pleading now, but not for long.

  “There’s no TIME!” The last word hit like a lightning strike.

  Please, Pao thought, willing the green paper dolls to sprout up around her, the nitrous oxide feeling to return. . . .

  But nothing happened, and it seemed someone had won the argument, because Pao’s father was striding toward her, looking like he knew exactly what he was doing.

  “Please,” Pao said, aloud this time. “Just let me go.”

  There was the briefest flicker, a warmth behind his eyes, and then they went cold. The voice that spoke next was low and clear, every word precise.

  “Go?” her father said. “You haven’t even been inside yet.”

  Pao got to her feet and started running up the hill. She thought she might have a chance of escaping when she didn’t hear any footsteps behind her. But what happened next was so much worse than being snatched up by a middle-aged man who had just had an argument with himself right in front of you.

  Her father snapped his fingers, and she automatically looked over her shoulder at the sound. She watched with horror as two purple threads separated from the writhing mass and came toward her. She tried to keep going, but they wrapped around her legs and wound up her body, freezing cold to the point of burning her skin.

  The energy snakes felt like the touch of fantasma flesh. The purple cloud, like them, like La Llorona’s terrible pearl, was from the void—and from the strange way it lit the eyes of the man in front of her, Pao knew exactly how he had summoned it.

  “Come on, now, don’t struggle,” he said when Pao grunted and thrashed against her bonds. “You said you came here for answers, didn’t you? What better way to teach than by example?”

  Struggling was pointless, Pao quickly found. The more she strained against her bonds the tighter they twined around her, until she was sure there would be marks on her skin. Like freezer burn on tamales, Pao thought, wishing her mom were here. Why wasn’t I able to summon a portal this time?

  She whipped her head around, panic growing inside her. “Where’s Bruto?” she asked through teeth gritted against the pain.

  “The beast?” her father replied. “He’s waiting for my command. Even the young ones are obedient if you’re a worthy leader.”

  Despite the burn on her arms, Pao wrenched herself around to prove him wrong. Bruto would never follow this man. Bruto had been at her heels, hadn’t he? He was probably running back to find the Niños and Emma and her mom now, to protect them. . . .

  When she finally caught sight of her puppy on her left, Pao’s heart sank. He was sitting up straight and alert, none of the usual floppy puppy in his posture. His shoulders were rigid, his face front like a soldier submitting himself for inspection.

  Pao’s father snapped his fingers again. “Come,” he said in that dark, sinister, overly enunciated voice.

  No, Bruto, Pao thought desperately. Don’t do it. Show him you’re mine.

  But Bruto ran forward without hesitation. Not with the loopy lope of her puppy running to greet her, but with the laser-like focus of a working dog. Pao wanted to cry.

  First her father, and now her dog? She had come here for answers, for family, for proof that she wasn’t alone.

  Instead, she was more alone than she’d ever been.

  This man claimed he had the answers she’d been looking for, and Pao had been so eager to find them, but what would the truth cost her?

  She never asked herself that question enough.

  Pao’s father reached the trailer steps and reeled Pao in by the energy ropes. As he stepped through the door, she thrashed harder than ever. Pao could sense waves of malevolence coming from the inside. It was the same feeling she’d had at the mouth of the void. Like the place could destroy her, but that part of her belonged there nonetheless.

  It pulled at Pao like all her bad thoughts did, activating both her restlessness and recklessness. Are you ready? it asked in a persuasive voice. Ready to know everything? It’s time to finally understand who you are. . . .

  The trailer’s interior looked nothing like what Pao had imagined. Her lonely dad, she’d thought, would have, like, a cabin aesthetic. A rough-around-the-edges, too-much-flannel, drink-everything-out-of-a-coffee-mug type of vibe.

  This was none of those things. It wasn’t even a home.

  It was some kind of laboratory.

  The small space resembled a weather station more than anything, with multiple devices, needles sweeping and jumping as they reacted to various stimuli. She saw several screens—low-tech, like the one Franco had used to zero effect in the fight against the Hitchhiker. There was also a hot plate with various beakers and flasks set around it, bubbling and still liquids in a rainbow of colors.

  But the main feature was a metal throne-like chair right in the center of it all, wires sticking out of it in every direction, a round plastic headpiece like one of those archaic (and unsanitary) hair dryers at the weird salon in the basement of the mall.

  Somehow Pao knew that chair was intended for her—and it just wasn’t because there was no other seating in the room. She could sense her father’s thoughts, like they were a neon sign pointing her straight to it.

  He’d been waiting a long time to put her in this chair, Pao realized with a sinking feeling. She’d thought she was risking it all coming here. That he’d be surprised to see her. But he’d drawn her here himself, and she’d walked right into his trap.

  “Sit,” her father said, and the bonds around Pao dragged her with a force of their own, past the instruments and concoctions, until she was deposited unceremoniously on the cold metal chair. Beside her, Bruto dropped to his haunches in a robotic way, obeying her father fully, like he’d never once obeyed her.

  The purple threads of the void cloud slithered down Pao’s arms and legs to form restraints at her wrists and ankles. There was no way out of the chair. Her heartbeat sped up again in her chest.

  “So, Paola, at last.” Her father sat down across from her, on a wheeled stool with no back. Pao could see black marks on the floor where he’d rolled from one end of the trailer to the other, checking data, adding an ingredient or two, monitoring his progress on long, sleepless nights working toward a singular goal.

  It was a fantasy she’d often had of her dad—assuming his DNA was responsible for her love of science since she and her mom were such polar opposites.

  “What are you going to do with me?” Pao asked, a shudder traveling through her. When she’d pictured herself in this moment, it was always as his collaborator, not his prisoner.

  “Ah, another question,” he said, staring into her eyes like he was x-raying her. “We’ll get to them all—especially that one—but let’s start with the first, shall we?”

  Pao had precious few memories of her father—few enough that she hadn’t even been able to conjure his face in a dream—but she knew as surely as she knew her own name that this wasn’t the man she remembered. This wasn’t the way he had looked at her.

  People change, Pao told herself critically. And she’d seen it, hadn’t she? Look what had happened to Dante. . . .

  “You asked about your friend and his abuela,” her father said now, like he was reading her thoughts. “I’ll admit they’re an interesting family. Señora Mata was so meddlesome when we were young—I wouldn’t have minded putting a stop to her. Unfortunately, I didn’t have anything to do with her coma. She knew the risks of accessing the void unprotected for that long.”

  “Liar,” Pao said, struggling against the restraints. “She told me you’d found an answer, that I had to get to it first, and it was the only way to help her. I’m sure you know what’s happening to her. That’s why I’m here, so tell me how to fix her!”

  Pao’s father examined his fingernails in a bored way. “Carmela only got two out of three right on that one, I’m afraid. Well below her normal average. Must be old age.”

  “What are you talking about?” Pao asked thro
ugh gritted teeth.

  “I have found an answer,” he said, his eyes gleaming now in that totally cliché super-villain way, like he was about to announce he’d found a way to euthanize all the world’s puppies at once. “And if you had discovered the answer first, that would’ve been the only way to stop it.” He surveyed her impassively. “But you didn’t. It seems the señora put rather too much faith in you.”

  Pao’s heart sank. It was too late. She hadn’t been able to save Señora Mata, and her father wasn’t the man she believed he was. She had failed.

  But something he’d said before struck her now, and she zeroed in on it. “You said she was meddlesome when you were young,” Pao said. “But the only person she hated when you were young was Beto. The boy my mom loved before you. That’s why this is happening, isn’t it? Because of him. I know he’s La Llorona’s son, Dad. If he’s doing this to you, we have to stop it.”

  You must understand, Señora Mata had said. The two names are one. . . .

  It was the part of the puzzle Pao had never been able to work out. She threw it at him now like a Hail Mary pass. Like when she said one big word to a teacher when she didn’t know the full answer, hoping they’d be impressed enough to fill in the rest.

  This time, Pao could tell she’d hit a nerve.

  “Beto is the reason for the drawbacks,” her father hissed. “Beto is the reason we didn’t get this done last summer, when you were already through the rift. We should have had you then, but you escaped because of his cowardice. . . .”

  Pao stayed silent, remembering the lesson she had learned from facing La Llorona last year. Sometimes another person’s momentum was the best weapon you had.

  “But none of that matters now,” her father said, straightening up again, rolling to the end of the trailer and flipping a switch that sparked with green light. “Beto is gone. I am here. And you are in the chair. It’s time we finished this once and for all.”

  Okay, Pao thought. Maybe silence hadn’t been the best choice. . . .

  “Wait,” she said, trying to buy herself some time. “You said you’d answer the rest of my questions.”