Charlie Hernández & the Castle of Bones

by Ryan Calejo

  “And what if we start drifting left?” I asked.

  “Well, then we’d be heading out to sea. But don’t worry about that. It’s the worst-case scenario.”

  “Actually, it’s our current scenario.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Violet’s head snapped up. I saw her expression go from confused to concerned to mildly panicked before finally settling on outright terrified. “Okay, that’s not good.”

  The storm continued to strengthen. Waves slammed into us, jerking the boat back and forth, and next thing I knew, we were picking up some major speed, and the shoreline and dock were nothing more than a fading smudge on the horizon; I could barely even see Adriana anymore. “How far are we from Chiloé?” I shouted at V.

  “Fifteen miles, give or take.” Translation: We weren’t going to make it.

  Just a soccer field or so ahead of us, huge waves were popping up all over the place, giant walls of water taller than most of the buildings in downtown Miami. Our junky little boat wasn’t built to handle this. And neither were we.

  Dude, freaking do something! I yelled at myself. But what could I do? My manifestations weren’t exactly reliable. What if I did manifest something, and it was something completely useless like elephant ears, and in the process, I sank this worthless piece of ocean litter?

  Bro, you don’t do something, you’re sunk anyway! I thought. But there wasn’t anything I could do! The only way out of this seemed to be up, and I couldn’t fly—

  Hold up. Actually, I could fly.…

  Sucking in a deep breath, I tried to calm my racing mind. I pictured birds. Pictured wings. I held the images in my mind just like Joanna had taught me. I saw the wings flapping, the feathers catching wind. I tried to feel myself soaring on them. Tipping them this way and that, rising higher and higher. I’m a bird, I told myself. If you’re a bird, I’m a bird.

  No, wait. That was from some romance movie. Not helping.…

  “Charlie?” Violet called as another wave crashed against the side of the boat, almost upending us and sloshing even more freezing-cold water onto our laps.

  I shivered. “Yeah?”

  “Are you still wearing your lucky Power Rangers underwear?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Because I really think it’s morphin’ time.…”

  “Working on it!” I closed my eyes, trying to ignore the roaring of the sea, the pounding waves, the way the little boat rocked nauseatingly back and forth. In my mind there were only the wings. I saw them stretching out of my back, long and strong, like they had that afternoon when I’d fought against La Cuca. I tried to imagine them growing out of me. Tried to feel them as part of me. One with me. But for all my trying, I didn’t feel any change. Nada.

  In fact, I didn’t feel a single thing except for my racing heart and the hollow pit of fear growing deep down in my belly.

  “Charlie, we almost ready?” Violet shouted. I could hear the fear in her voice. The panic. It wasn’t something I was used to. And it made me even more scared.

  “It’s not working,” I admitted miserably. “Nothing’s happening!”

  Violet didn’t look particularly pleased to hear that. She went quiet for a long moment, thinking. Finally she said, “Okay, plan B.” Then she leaned out over the rear of the boat, grabbed the length of rope attached to the dinghy, and began to reel it in.

  All I could do was watch, confused out of my mind. “What are you doing?”

  “Buying you some time. Now help me flip the dinghy.” Her eyes drifted past me, over my shoulder. “And quick!”

  I followed her gaze and instantly felt my stomach drop into my toes.

  A foaming, bubbling wall of water was coming straight at us—a roaring mountain of liquid trouble! It rose straight up, steep as any cliff, fizzing and roiling and surging as it pulled us into itself with the force of about a trillion or so vacuum cleaners.

  “I think we’re going to need a bigger boat,” I heard myself say.

  “Charlie, help me!” Violet shouted.

  “Go! Go!” Even though I had no idea what she was up to, I knew that a plan was better than no plan—plus the dinghy was made entirely of fiberglass and didn’t weigh much at all, so getting it out of the water wasn’t going to be a problem.

  We lifted it as high as we could, and Violet guided it so that it dropped over us. The flimsy shell of a thing crashed down with a hollow bang, and once she had it settled into place, I realized its dimensions were nearly identical to the wooden boat; both ends came together at virtually the same place, and our boat was just a hair or two slimmer than the dinghy. Immediately Violet began to rope the two together with the couple of feet of bungee cord that had been wrapped around the straps of her backpack, snaking it under and around the center benches of both boats, through the foot bracings at the corners, and then tying it off.

  “So what’s the plan?” I shouted, helping her tug on the knot she’d made.

  “In 1620, Cornelis Drebbel created the world’s first functioning submarine. It was regarded as one of the greatest feats of nautical engineering at the time. In 1897, John Philip Holland perfected it. Obviously, ours will be closer to Cornelis’s version, but as long as it behaves more or less the same, we just might breathe fresh oxygen again.”

  “All very interesting stuff. But I ask you again, what EXACTLY is the plan?”

  “I’m making a submarine, Charlie. A submarine.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Huh. Pretty awesome plan. Except, of course, for the fact that she was making a sub out of a junky, engineless boat and an even junkier dinghy. Through one of the holes in the bottom of said dinghy (which was now the roof of our homemade submarine—yay, us!), I could see the enormous mountain of seawater bearing down on us, blocking out the dock, the shore, the beach, and any hope of living to see five seconds from now. I’d never seen anything so terrifyingly beautiful in my entire life.

  “IT’S STILL GETTING BIGGER!” I yelled back at Violet, who was busy making little adjustments to the bungee cord, tightening it here and there.

  “That’s not helpful!” she yelled back.

  “NO, IT’S NOT! IT’S LIKE FIFTY STORIES HIGH NOW!”

  “I meant YOU! YOU’RE not being helpful.”

  “For the record, I don’t think this is a very good idea!”

  “ALSO NOT HELPFUL!”

  The bubbling, roaring mountain continued to rise and rise, and suddenly it felt like the bottom fell out of the ocean—

  We dropped thirty or so feet in the span of a heartbeat, bouncing off something hard, the bone-jarring impact punching the air out of my lungs a split second before a hundred thousand gallons of angry seawater came crashing down on us.

  We tumbled end over end, water blasting into the boat from every angle, the bungee cord stretching and straining almost to the point of snapping.

  I heard a sharp plastic crack below me and the groan of straining wood above, but our little fake-marine somehow held together.

  Then something slammed into us—or we slammed into it—and Violet and I were flung backward. My elbow smashed into her forehead. Her knee slammed into my stomach, driving my organs back into my spine.

  We were both screaming our heads off—I knew for sure I was—but any sound was drowned out by the deafening roar of the water rushing around us.

  Suddenly the USS Dinghy shot straight up like a rocket and bobbed for a moment, and then the bungee cord snapped, and the two boats came apart.

  We found ourselves lying on our backs in the dinghy, coughing up water and staring up at a dark, starless sky.

  The only thing I could think to say was “Where’s the moon?”

  Violet said, “I don’t think that’s the sky, Charlie.…”

  A moment later, the “sky” began to bubble and foam, and I realized, Holy Chalupa, she was right! That wasn’t the sky at all but another wave—this one probably fifty times larger than the last one!

  We barely had time to grab
on to each other and scream “AAAAHHHHHHHHH!” before the wave swept over us, instantly swamping the dinghy and plunging us straight down into the murky depths.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  I’d never known what truly freezing water felt like until right then and there. The shock of it instantly paralyzed me on contact; it stole everything—the feeling from my limbs, the breath from my lungs, every thought from my brain. Seawater swirled around us, blinding me with bubbles. Violet and I were ripped out of each other’s arms. I went tumbling and twirling and twisting until I was so sick and disoriented that I didn’t even know which way was up.

  My brain spun. My lungs throbbed. I opened my mouth to scream, but instead of sound going out, a rush of salty water came surging in, and I started to choke. Panicking, I kicked and flailed my arms, trying to fight my way to the surface even though I still had no idea which way the surface actually was.

  As if that wasn’t bad enough, a whirlpool—yeah, a legit spinning vortex of seawater—suddenly formed at my feet and began dragging me even deeper into blackness. The pressure of the ocean was incredible. It pressed against me on all sides, squeezing like a giant, liquidy boa constrictor, twisting all my bones out of whack. My ribs ached. Pain lit up the area between my shoulder blades and spine, and when I reached back to touch it, I thought, Dios Mio! Because the skin there felt like it had started to peel—and badly! My panic ratcheted up another notch. I could feel my chest burning, my lungs screaming, begging for oxygen. I tried to stop myself, tried to fight against the irresistible urge to breathe. ButI couldn’t. It was nature.

  My mouth flew open as my lungs drew in a hungry, desperate breath—

  But somehow I didn’t suck down another lungful of freezing seawater. Instead I breathed air… fresh, pure air. Actual oxygen! I couldn’t believe it.

  I sucked in another breath. And another. And immediately the burning in my chest began to fade. My racing thoughts slowed, and my head began to clear.

  And with that came a pretty simple but important realization: My nose wasn’t just happily stumbling upon little magical pockets of breathable oxygen floating around in the ocean. No, I must’ve manifested fishy parts—I must’ve manifested gills!

  It was the only explanation to why I could now breathe down here surrounded by about a gazillion tons of churning water.

  And that wasn’t all. Glancing down at my hands, I noticed that my fingers were now webbed and scaly, glistening greenish gray in the dim shafts of moonlight that reached this far down. And the same thing was going on with my feet, which, by the way, also looked to be about seven or eight sizes bigger.

  No joke, they looked like Nike had designed a hybrid between dolphin flippers and clown shoes—minus the cool little swoosh, of course.

  I tested them out and felt myself zip through the water quick as an eel!

  Oh, man, that’s all KINDS of awesome! But then another thought hit me, one that was nowhere near as “awesome”: Violet was also down here somewhere. And, unlike me, she probably hadn’t manifested gills. Which meant that if I didn’t find her—and find her right freakin’ now—she was going to drown!

  I began to turn in fast little circles, desperately scanning the ocean around me. And even though some kind of thin membrane had slid over my eyes, some sort of mucusy barrier that made it übereasy to see underwater (and a whole lot more comfortable, because it kept the salt from stinging my eyes), I didn’t see her anywhere.

  No, no, no, no! V, WHERE THE HECK ARE YOU?

  Catching movement out of the corner of my eye, I whirled: Small dark shapes were falling through the water all around me, leaving trails of tiny bubbles as they sank.

  Frogs. Dozens and dozens of frogs. Hundreds, maybe.

  They must’ve been raining down from the sky like in Portugal.…

  Dude, forget the frogs—FIND VIOLET!

  Whirling around again, I looked up, down—

  And what I saw totally froze me in place. (As if the freezing-cold water wasn’t enough.)

  Way down below me, rising out of the murky darkness, was another one of those bone castles—a castell! But oh, man, this one was huge—at least three times the size of the one in Lapa do Santo, and the bones had been completely picked clean of flesh, gleaming so white—even way down here—that they left dazzle spots in my vision.

  This was the second one we’d seen in South America, I realized with a shiver of fear. Third overall. But what was a castell doing all the way down here? At the bottom of the ocean? And why did we keep running into these things everywhere we went?

  Voices echoed around me, a ghostly babble in the rush and swirl of water. But I didn’t see anyone else nearby. So where were the voices coming from…?

  The ocean gurgled. A wave swept past. I blinked, turning—and finally did see someone: She was flailing around in the water not ten yards away.

  Violet!

  I sliced toward her, wrapping my arms around her waist, then kicked up with every ounce of strength in me. We broke the surface a moment later, Violet gasping, choking on seawater. Her hair was plastered to her face and her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, but she was managing to suck air in through her mouth, and that was good.

  Way off in the distance loomed a black mass, some huge shapeless hump against the starry sky.

  Land. Chiloé!

  “V, wrap your arms around my neck!” I shouted. The ocean roared and the waves lifted us high into the air as I began to swim us desperately toward shore, throwing one arm out in front of the other and kicking my legs until my body burned and my muscles felt on the verge of failing. The moment we reached the shore it was like someone hit the off button in my brain, and I collapsed, blacking out before my head even hit the ground.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  When I came to, I was lying on my back on the rocky shore, the seawater washing up to the top of my legs, then retreating slowly back with the constant motion of the waves. Violet, who was sitting next to me on the sand, had her legs curled up to her chest, arms locked around her knees, and was shivering a little in the gusts of cold night air sweeping in off the ocean.

  “Have a nice nap?” she asked, peering down at me through tangles of wet hair, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Behind her, a little farther up the beach, our book bags had washed up on shore and, a little past them—thankfully—so had my sneakers. They must’ve slipped off when I’d morphed those awesome flipper feet. Propping myself up on my side, I felt around for the gills, realized they were gone. So was the webbing between my fingers and toes.

  “How long have I been out?” I said, still tasting the saltwater coating my tongue.

  Violet glanced down at her watch. Waterproof. Of course. “Maybe seven minutes.”

  Well, that isn’t too bad.…

  Several yards behind us a wall of rocky cliffs jutted out of the sand, their faces carved with caves and overgrown with loops of thick, hanging vines. It looked as if a thousand hungry mouths gaped along the beachhead, just waiting for someone foolish enough to wander ashore so they could feed.

  I glanced up at Violet, who was still peering down at me, and just started laughing—couldn’t help myself.…

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, shaking her head. “What’s so funny?”

  “You are,” I admitted, and she made a face.

  “Me? What about me?”

  “That whole submarine idea…”

  A smile stretched slowly across her face even though she was trying to fight it a little; then she burst out laughing, smoothing her salty, plastered hair out of her eyes. “Guess it was kind of ridiculous…”

  “And kinda awesome…”

  I was still looking up at her, still staring at that dazzling smile and feeling so lucky that she was alive to give it—and that I was alive to see her give it—when she said, “Charlie, why are you looking at me like that?”

  I shrugged, feeling my fingers sink into the soft sand. “My abuela would’ve liked you, that’s all.… She woul
d’ve liked you a lot.”

  V looked sort of surprised. “You think so?”

  “Oh, yeah. I mean, how could she not? You’re smart. You’re tough. You’re ridiculously brave. You’re just like she was.…”

  Even though we were just talking, my heart had begun to pound again—and almost as hard as it had when we’d been swimming for our lives. It was weird.

  “You’re not so bad yourself,” Violet said, giving me a playful punch on the arm. Our eyes held for a moment, then, getting sort of embarrassed or whatever, I turned to face the ocean as another breeze blew in, salty and fresh. A few seconds passed.

  Then I suddenly remembered something.

  “Oh, and I saw another castell!” I shouted.

  “Where?”

  “Down in the ocean. Deep down.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, which is sort of freaking me out, because, like, what is a castell even doing down there?”

  The smile had faded from V’s face, and she was nodding now, like it was beginning to freak her out too. “Yeah, that is pretty strange.…” Leaning back on her hands, she turned to stare at the wall of caves ringing the beach, as if in deep thought. Finally she said, “Well, we made it. We’re here.… So now what?”

  I was sort of wondering about that too, but anyone who knew anything about Chilean mythology would know that there was really only one place we needed to visit on the island. “We have to find the Warlock’s Cave,” I said.

  “The what?”

  “It’s like this super well known meeting place for brujos and brujas on the island. If any sombras came through here, they would’ve heard about it.”

  “And how are we supposed to find this Warlock’s Cave?” V asked.

  And thinking back to the legends, I said, “We just follow the moonlight. Follow it straight into the heart of the jungle.”

  * * *

  The Chilean jungle was eerily quiet. No birds chirped. I didn’t hear any insects buzzing either. All around us, impossibly tall trees loomed up like giant silent sentinels, their trunks shaggy with moss, their branches heavy with blooming buds. The air was thick. We stuck to the overgrown path as best we could, pushing aside thorny tangles of brambles, following a trail of moonlight, our feet sinking into the squishy ground. Once I stepped on what looked like a smooth gray rock, and the rock sprouted claws and took a couple of fast snaps at my sneaker before scuttling off into a web of mangrove roots. Not exactly a friendly welcome. “Watch your step,” I told Violet. “Might cost you a toe.”