by Sergio Gomez
A nervousness started to work its way into Dalton’s stomach. It was dark out there, truly dark. Darker than he imagined it would’ve been. And he was out here alone. Suddenly, he wondered if maybe it would’ve been smarter to go hiking with them.
He gulped.
A motion light to the right of the cabin came on as something running through the bushes a few feet away activated it. Dalton looked, but whatever was out there was too quick. All he caught was a blur retreating into the darkness.
He took a big step back, keeping his eyes glued on the bushes.
Twigs snapped somewhere in that direction, sounding like fireworks going off in the quiet seclusion. Dalton thought he would piss his pants if it weren’t for the terror. It was like his entire body—including his insides and blood—was frozen solid with fear.
Then, he saw the two beady eyes emerge from the bushes, followed by the snout that they sat on top of. He let out a short breath as the doe shyly came out of her hiding place and into the light. Dalton looked down at the front of his jeans and laughed in relief when he saw he really hadn’t wet himself.
“Dalton, you giant fool!” he said to the empty cabin.
In the moment of uncertainty, his mind had started to imagine the most horrific thing would come out from behind the bushes. A three-headed monster or a ghost or something equally juvenile. It seemed that this kind of seclusion and darkness had a way of reawakening childish fears.
An idea popped into Dalton’s mind for a poem, and he hurried over to his shared room in the cabin to grab his notebook. Something told him this would be the only peace and quiet he’d get on this trip.
And he was right. Just not in the way that he thought.
Chapter 21
Ignacio was having a nightmare. It was one he’d had many times before and he knew how it ended—badly, always badly. But he couldn’t do anything about it, not even wake up from it. He could only ride along with it.
He was a little boy in the nightmare, maybe six years old. A big six year old, but nowhere near as big as he was as an adult.
He was coming home from school. The curtains were all pulled down in the house. There were noises, moans, coming from Mamá’s bedroom. The room’s door was slightly open, enough that light escaped from the gap and lit the hallway leading to the bedroom with candlelight, but not open enough to see what was happening inside. The air was stale and smelled like a mixture of sweat, Mamá’s perfume, and sex (although Ignacio didn’t know what that was, then or now).
“Mamá…” Ignacio said, walking down the hallway toward the bedroom. “Eres tu, Mamá?”
He heard no reply. Only more moans coming from Mamá, and the bed squeaking.
Ignacio continued plodding down the hallway. With each step he took, the hallway seemed to stretch out longer and longer, the door getting further and further from him.
He called out to his mother again, but there was no reply.
Ignacio picked his pace up, almost jogging down the hallway, and finally reached the door. Mamá’s rhythmic huffs of breath between the louder moans made him stop.
Was someone hurting her?
(No. He knew how it ended, he knew what was behind the door, but his dream version didn’t… and Ignacio couldn’t control anything in the nightmare, not even the thoughts in his head.)
He pushed the door open and saw Mamá on her back.
Her legs were in the air, with black tentacles wrapped around her ankles. The tentacles belonged to a humanoid creature as dark as a moonless night.
Mamá’s head was upside down, hanging off the edge of the bed. Blood ran down her neck and into her mouth from a deep slash across her throat. She smiled when she saw Ignacio, showing him her blood-covered teeth.
“Hello, hijo,” she said, licking her lips clean even though the blood kept coming in a torrential downpour, quickly covering her mouth again. “You’re home early.”
At the sound of her voice, the tentacled creature lifted its head up from out of her crotch. “GET OUT!”
Ignacio had gone from being a five-year-old boy to a full-grown adult as he’d walked down the hallway. In real life, he’d been too little, too powerless to do anything about the men he’d seen making Mamá moan, but in here, in this dream, he was big and powerful like in real life. He could fight the monster off and save Mamá.
This was his second chance.
Ignacio jumped at the monster, both hands out in front of him, ready to rip the monster’s head off. One of the creature’s tentacles let Mamá’s leg go and shot out, grabbing him by the throat. The tentacle stretched out, pushing Ignacio back, and slammed him into a wall. All the air came rushing out of his lungs.
Still pinning him against the wall, the creature lifted Ignacio into the air like he was weightless.
Over the creature’s shoulder, he saw Mamá was still laying on the bed with a big, bloody smile on her face. Her head began to wiggle around, and the slash across her throat opened wider. Blood dripped out of it faster, soaking the carpet at the edge of the bed even more.
Ignacio grabbed at the tentacle. It was wet and slimy, but strong. He was powerless against this creature—just as he’d been powerless in real life against the men who made Mamá moan.
“YOU HAVE NO POWER,” the creature barked.
Ignacio closed his eyes and screamed.
He awoke screaming in real life. He was covered in sweat. Mamá’s rosary was clutched in his hands the way he’d fallen asleep holding it.
Another nightmare. Ignacio went into fetal position, holding the rosary tight to his body with one hand and sucked the thumb of the other.
The room was pitch black, the kind of darkness that seemed to swallow you.
He was lonely. He missed Mamá.
Ignacio waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, then got out of the bed and changed out of his pajamas. He was going out to the barn to visit his Barbie as he often did when he felt lonely.
Chapter 22
Couple never returns from ‘most secluded’ cabin in PA.
Fred hadn’t thought about the headline since they were at the gas station until now. They’d been having too much fun at the cabin, but in these dark woods the eeriness was beginning to outweigh the fun. Especially now that they’d traveled far enough away from the cabin that they couldn’t see it anymore.
“Why are you all so quiet?” Gavin said from the front of the group. Despite his question, he too had gone quiet after a few minutes of whistling when everyone else’s chatter had stopped about fifteen minutes ago. He turned around to face them but kept walking backward. “You’d think someone died or something.”
“We’re just trying to enjoy the hike,” Brooke said to him. “Watch where you’re walking, dork! You don’t want to trip out here!”
“Ah, whatever,” Gavin said, throwing his hands in the air, but she was right, and he faced forward again. There’d been a few root knots and rocks jutting out of the earth like giant knuckles that he’d already almost stumbled over. Walking backward out here at night wasn’t the wisest decision.
The exchange between Gavin and Brooke sprouted conversations among the others. The path they hiked was only wide enough for two people walking side by side. Noelle was next to Fred, and noticed how pale he’d gotten. Maybe it was just the way the moonlight reflected off him, but she wanted to make sure.
She leaned in close to him. “Hey, Fred. You okay?”
Fred nodded. “Yeah, I’m alright.”
But the truth was, he couldn’t stop thinking about the missing people reports in these parts. It would never happen to them, of course. Because they were being careful, following the orange reflectors marking the trail to the lake.
What if the couple had been careful, too? he argued with himself, wishing he would’ve read that damn article after all.
How long could the article have taken him to read? Twenty minutes? He would gladly exchange twenty minutes of lost sleep last night to know what happened to that couple righ
t now.
Fred felt his heart beating faster in his chest, and suddenly the air felt too thick to breathe. Like he’d been shoved into a vat of molasses or something.
Then, he felt Noelle’s soft hands wrap around his arm. She leaned her head onto his shoulder, and he caught a whiff of her hair—some sort of floral scent, lavender maybe—and in an instant everything was okay again.
“You’re not spooked, are you, Fred Meyers?” she said, turning her head to look at him with almond-colored eyes. “Because I’ll protect you from the fear bees if you are.”
“Fear bees?” Fred smiled.
She grinned. “I used to tell my sister when she was real little that there were bees that could smell fear. And whenever she was afraid of something, I’d say ‘the fear bees will come if you don’t stop being afraid.’ It worked to help her get over being scared of the dark and stop peeing her bed.”
Fred laughed. “That’s cute.”
Noelle gave his arm a tight squeeze before breaking away from him. “You better make sure you’re not calling them to us, Fred Meyers.”
“Uh, yeah. I’ll make sure I’m not.”
The group fell silent again as they followed their flashlight beams through the hike. They walked a good fifteen yards or so like this, until Gavin stumbled on a big root from an oak tree he didn’t see. He shot his arms out in front of him to keep from faceplanting right into the dirt.
The others laughed, but Fred noticed they didn’t laugh the way they had back at the cabin. Or even at the beginning of this nighttime hike. They laughed like they knew this was a bad idea.
If fear bees were real, Fred thought, they’d have already called an entire swarm on themselves.
Chapter 23
Out here in these desolate woods, it was easy for anyone to pick up on sounds that disturbed the natural quietness. Ignacio, however, wasn’t just anyone. He was born a special boy (as Mamá always told him) with super hearing abilities, which meant he could practically hear anything going on out here if he focused hard enough.
Human voices were different, though. They were distinct enough, and rare enough out here, that they always perked up his senses.
That’s what his ears were picking up on now. Voices in the trees. He stopped, halfway to the barn from the farmhouse, and listened closely. Now that he was outside the grove of trees that surrounded the farmhouse, he could hear the voices better. There were several of them, walking through a path that wasn’t too far away.
He knew exactly which path it was, and the shortest way through the woods to it, because Ignacio knew these woods better than anyone. He knew them better than even the animals did.
His brain was slow, or so he was told, but it could memorize the geography of places perfectly.
Changing directions, he headed toward the voices. He wanted to see if there was anything worth hunting down.
Ignacio crouched down behind a thick bush. Using two heavy fingers he separated some branches to get a better view of the trail. The hikers hadn’t made the turn to come into his view yet, but he could hear them in the distance, so he blew out his lantern.
Now, he heard them better. Their voices had an unsteady, nervous quake to them—a hint of fear. It excited Ignacio, and he was ready to jump out and attack them right then and there, but Varias Caras took over before he could do that and he stayed put.
We don’t have a weapon, tonto.
That’s right. He’d been on his way to the barn, not out to hunt. He didn’t have anything except his hunting knife on him, and that wouldn’t do much with this many of them. He needed something more powerful for those numbers.
The hikers came into his view. A muscled-up guy in a sleeveless shirt led the group. Behind him, six others marched in a haphazard bunch.
There were three boys besides the leader. Two who looked in their early twenties, and a third one who was much younger than anyone else in the group. He looked like a shaggy-haired teenage version of the muscled-up guy.
Then there were three girls; A tall blond with a confident walk that made Ignacio nervous, a smaller girl in jeans and hiking boots and silver hair, and a third girl with caramel-colored skin.
This one… This was the one that caught his attention.
She was beautiful. Hispanic, with long hair, thick eyebrows, and plump lips.
“Mamá…?” Ignacio whispered.
Ignacio watched the campers coming toward him. Each of their flashlights shone over him as they rounded the path, but just as he thought would happen, they didn’t see him. They were too focused on following the bend in the trail.
They walked past him, one by one, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off the Hispanic girl.
Yes. She looked like Mamá. Like Mamá when she was young, he thought, remembering the family album back in his bedroom.
He caught a glimpse of her calves flexing as she walked by his hiding spot.
Ignacio licked his lips, feeling the roughness of the mask on the bottom of his tongue. She excited him in a way he’d never felt before. He wanted her. Needed her.
It didn’t matter how many there were to try to stop him from taking her. He would have her.
The group marched past him and were swallowed up by the darkness. He could still hear their whispers in the distance. There was a faint sound of laughter—one of them was her laughter. He was sure of it because it made his heart flutter.
“I—I want,” he muttered.
Not tonight. Varias Caras said to him. A good hunter waits for the perfect opportunity.
Ignacio smacked himself on the head to shake the urge of chasing her down.
He echoed Varias Caras’ message. “Not tonight.”
He stood up from his crouch, and then backed up into the shadows. Mamá’s lookalike had gotten away, for now.
Chapter 24
The light from outside cut through the barn like a saber, stirring Nadine awake. She opened her eyes—slowly, always slowly so the sudden brightness wouldn’t damage her eyes. There was always pain, but that she couldn’t do anything about.
Varias Caras pulled the door closed and started toward Nadine. At night, there was almost no light inside the barn, so the only way she could track his movements was by the lantern.
“Good evening, bella!” he said, dropping a satchel in front of her.
Varias Caras lit the torches hanging on the wall with a match, putting this part of the barn in an orange glow. He was wearing a mask she’d never seen before. The mask was old. Not just in the sense that the material was old, which it was, but also that the person whose face it had been had died at an elderly age. It looked like an old woman’s face. There was even poorly applied makeup on it.
Varias Caras crouched down and unzipped the satchel. One by one, like a kid counting to make sure all his marbles were in the bag, he took out the makeup supply. A compact, some brushes, and a gold lipstick sat in a neat row in front of him.
If it’d been an appropriate time for humor, Nadine would’ve laughed at the lipstick. It was like a child’s idea of what a woman would use. The whole layout was, really, but the lipstick was the kicker.
Varias Caras looked up at her, noticing Nadine staring at the mask. He rocked back on his heels and fell onto his ass. “Want to hear about mask?”
Nadine didn’t say anything, just continued to stare at him. As comforting as it was to have someone speak to her, she didn’t like talking back to him.
But as he often did, Varias Caras took her silence as meaning, yes, and went into his story.
“I save money some years ago.” Varias Caras bobbed his head with each syllable. “Fly to Mexico.”
He also paused and took in a deep breath every other sentence. It reminded Nadine of one of her third graders with asthma, a small boy named Samuel, who would stand with her during recess and tell her about his bug collection or his toys because he couldn’t play with the other kids. The thought of that boy, and the rest of her third graders, made her want to cry.
But she didn’t have the energy to. Not right now, anyway.
Varias Caras continued. “I visit abuelita’s grave. Start digging. Guy working the graveyard shoots at me. Almost hits me with bullet.”
If only he would have killed you, Nadine thought.
“I return next day.” He hacked through the air with his hand as if it were a blade. “Cut head off. Maybe same guy. Maybe not. Not sure…”
Varias Caras paused to suck in breath. “I take abuelita’s face off for mask…then return body to grave. In Mexico, we respect our elders.”
Finishing the story, he went back into a crouch. He picked up the compact and opened it. The powder inside was old and dry, and he had to press the brush hard against it to get the makeup to stick to it.
“Hold still, and nothing bad happens,” Varias Caras warned.
The irony of it made Nadine glance at the ends of her legs, where smooth, blackened nubs were instead of her feet. The first night he’d captured her, he’d cut her feet off so she “couldn’t run away” and had cauterized the wounds with a piece of metal he heated up with a blowtorch so “they wouldn’t hurt and bleed too much.” Nadine supposed there were worse things he could still do to her, but the irony of his choice of words was hard to ignore.
Using the brush, he applied the blue eyeshadow onto her face. It got everywhere because the brush was too small for his large fingers to handle with any sort of dexterity. He dipped the brush into the red makeup next, and then applied that on her face.
Nadine didn’t need a mirror to know the job was sloppy. She could feel the dry powder caked in swatches all across her face. It went from her cheeks and up to her hairline, and probably was in her hair, too.
Done with the compact, he closed it and stuffed it and the brush back into the satchel. Then he picked up the gold lipstick. He took the cap off, revealing that the actual makeup inside was cherry-red. It didn’t really make much sense given the circumstances, but Nadine felt some sort of relief at this.
