by Ryan Calejo
I didn’t take my eyes off her face. “Do you have any idea what’s happening to me?” I asked after a couple of seconds.
She thought for another long moment, then shook her head. Her dozen or so necklaces jingled like bells. “I can’t say that I do, though it certainly reminds me of something.”
“Of what?” Violet asked quickly.
Señora L picked up the crystal ball. “Perhaps you’ve seen this symbol before.” The long black nail of her index finger clicked against the smooth underside of the ball, where a very familiar symbol had been stamped into the glass.
“That’s the same symbol that was on the map!” I said, nearly leaping out of my seat. The horns and feathers!
“Sí, it appears on many items in this world. . . . It’s a picto-prophecy. About El Cambiador.”
My skin sprang up with goose bumps. “Wait. You’re talking about that old myth . . . ? The Morphling?”
“It’s no myth, mi hijo.” Señora L’s eyes glittered as she spoke. They reminded me of my abuela’s—dark and full of mysteries. “Anyway, years ago, you could find that symbol on almost anything—even common household items like this glass ball. It was a symbol of hope.”
“What does the prophecy say?” Violet asked.
“The five feathers represent the fifth Morphling born into our world. The two horns speak of the two distinct manifestations—horns and feathers. The five feathers combined with the two horns yields the number seven, which, being the perfect number, speaks of the child’s perfect work: bringing the long-sought peace between the Land of the Living and the Land of the Dead. The prophecy was given so that we would be able to recognize the child when it came. And there are those among us who have been looking for the one who would come manifesting horns and feathers for many, many years now.” She let out a low sigh. “Of course, the prophecy itself is more than nine hundred years old, and the child has never been seen, much less heard from. Most believe La Mano Peluda managed to kill the poor thing before it could even be born into our world. And without a Morphling to oppose them, La Mano Peluda has grown even more powerful. It’s why you don’t see the symbol too much anymore. . . .”
My pulse was racing. I felt the same swirly sort of panic I did before a pop quiz, but I forced myself to sound calm as I asked the most important question in our conversation, maybe the most important question of my life:
“Señora L, is it possible that I could be the Morphling . . . ?”
Just hearing myself speak the words made my heart pound so hard I thought it was going to burst through my chest. It was one thing to accept the fact that mythical beings existed, that they lived among us. But to consider the possibility that I, Charlie Hernández, might actually be one? That was a whole ’nother level of crazy.
The psychic stared at me for a moment. “I—I don’t know . . . ,” she stammered. “Are you?”
I shrugged. “How should I know? That’s why we came here. We were looking for a lady who deals in the dark arts. Someone who could explain what’s happening to me.”
Her gaze narrowed suspiciously. “Who told you there was a lady around here who dealt in the dark arts?”
“The calaca. The one in La Rosa.”
“You mean Gregory?”
“I don’t know. We’re not exactly on a first-name basis. The freak was a trade away from bashing our heads in with a shovel.”
Señora L grinned. It was a happy sort of grin. “He does have a terrible temper, doesn’t he?”
“So, you’re her, right?” Violet said. “The lady he was talking about?”
“Sí, sí, that’s me. But I’m sorry. . . . I really can’t help you in this.”
“Then who can?”
“Any member of La Liga de Sombras, probably. Queen Joanna, for sure.”
I shook my head. The League of Shadows? “What’s La Liga de Sombras? And who’s Queen Joanna?” I wasn’t exactly up to date on the monarchs of the world, but the name didn’t ring any bells.
“Olvídalo,” Señora L said, waving a dismissive hand. “That information won’t be of any use to you anyway. I think we should do your complimentary palm reading now.”
She didn’t give me a chance to say no, just snatched my hand and cradled it between both of hers. Her touch was cool, her fingers surprisingly gentle as they traced invisible lines across my palm. “Hmmm.”
“Is that a good ‘hmmm’?” I asked. “Or a not-so-good ‘hmmm’?”
Her lips pressed into a thin line as she lifted her gaze to mine. Her pupils were huge, bottomless. I could see my own worried face reflected in them; it was all bloated and cartoonish like the images in fun house mirrors. “It is as I feared,” she said ominously. “Both of you are in grave danger. . . .”
Violet and I both sat up. “What?” we said in unison.
“Sí, sí . . . many different people are after you. Bad people. Dangerous people!”
Violet was shaking her head. “Like who?”
“Doesn’t matter. But I know how to keep you safe.”
“You do?”
“I most certainly do,” Señora L announced happily. “You can stay here with me! Here en mi casa!”
Frowning, I said, “You mean, like, for the night?”
“No, tonto, not just for the night,” she corrected. “Forever.”
Just then there came more banging sounds from behind the curtain. This time, though, I thought I heard voices, too.
Suddenly, I got a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Señora L clapped her hands together, smiling widely, crazily, and I realized with a jolt of alarm that the psycho psychic was looking at us with the same sort of hungry intensity you might see in the eyes of a hunting lioness. “So how about you two slip into those pajamas now and get off to bed,” she said in a motherly sort of tone. “It’s getting late, you know.”
“I think it’s time to go,” Violet whispered in my ear.
We both stood up. “So, uh, we’re gonna get going now . . . ,” I said to Señora L. “You’re right. It’s pretty late. But we’ll drop by next week for some tarot card poker, maybe. I’m also a big Go Fish guy. . . . How about Tuesday? ¿Está bien?”
“Oh, no, no, no,” she said, scrunching her thick brows together as she shook her head vigorously from side to side. “I’m not letting you back outside. What kind of mother would I be if I just let my children wander through the Everglades at this time of night? ¿Estás loco o qué te pasa?” She fixed us with another loony smile. “Now, come give your mother a hug, slip into your pj’s, and then off to bed. ¡Vamos!”
When she spread her arms, the sleeve of her dress pulled back to reveal a large black tattoo done in fancy cursive letters. It read: Maria.
All of a sudden, everything made sense. The random bouts of crying. The photos with the kids. Her overprotective, bordering-on-psychotic maternal instincts.
She even called herself Señora L, for crying out loud.
¡Si fuera perro te muerde! said a little voice in my head. It was one of my abuela’s favorite phrases—basically, If it had been a dog, it would’ve bitten you!
And it would have bitten me, all right. Bitten me hard.
“You’re La Llorona, aren’t you?” I breathed.
“Don’t you call me that!” she snapped. “¡No te atrevas! In this house, you will refer to me only as Mamá. . . .”
Violet had already started to backpedal toward the door. “Uh, Charlie, what’s going on . . . ?”
“She’s the Crying Woman,” I whispered, inching away from the table. “The one from the legends.”
“You mean the lady who lurks by rivers and kidnaps children?”
“That would be her.”
More pounding from behind the curtain, and this time I clearly heard: “Help! Somebody help us! We’re trapped!”
“In fact, it looks like she’s already kidnapped a few,” I pointed out.
La Llorona snarled. “Why are both of
you so afraid of me . . . ? What makes you think I’m such a bad person?”
“For one, you tried to use a phony palm reading to scare us into living with you!” I shouted. A trick I was pretty sure she’d used on more than one occasion. Probably explained the trunk full of kid-size pajamas in her living room.
She shrugged. “That’s not that bad.”
“Okay, well, and two—you killed your kids! Your REAL kids!”
“That was my husband’s fault!” she shot back. “He cheated on me. It drove me insane! I was having a really, really bad day! Everyone has them!”
“True. Everyone does. But only crazy people KILL THEIR KIDS!”
Her furious gaze sharpened on me. “You keep talking to me like that and I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap, niño malagradecido. . . . Now, obey your mamá! Get into your pajamas and get ready for bed!”
Just then a cold fist pressed into my back—the doorknob. This was our chance.
“Go, Violet, go!” I shouted as I whirled to start undoing the locks. I guesstimated it would take me ten seconds to undo all of them. Plenty of time.
Or so I thought.
Because that was when La Llorona began to scream.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It started low, a bloodcurdling moan that quickly rose in volume until it filled the entire bungalow.
I clamped my hands over my ears as a crushing wave of sadness swept over me, filling me with the deepest, darkest grief I’d ever known. Suddenly, I didn’t care about escaping anymore. Didn’t care about figuring out what was happening to me, didn’t even care about finding my parents. It was as if a storm cloud had settled over me. A churning, whirling funnel so thick and black I couldn’t see any way out of it.
Next to me, Violet had collapsed to the wooden floor and was now curled into a small ball under La Llorona’s table, weeping loudly. Tears were streaming down her face like someone had opened a faucet behind her eyes. They pooled on the floor around her head, sort of like a watery crown. I dropped to my knees beside her, burying my face in my hands, feeling big, fat tears rolling down my own cheeks. It was the strangest thing I’d ever felt. I couldn’t explain why I was so sad, why I was crying so hard—I just was. And it was the only thing I wanted to do. The ONLY thing.
I can’t go on, I thought bitterly. (The words seemed to have bubbled up out of nowhere.) No, I won’t go on without my children! Not without my little ones!
Wait—little ones?
I didn’t have little ones.
I didn’t have big ones, either.
Just then, it hit me. This wasn’t me! La Llorona was somehow filling us with her thoughts, her emotions, somehow using her awful wailing sobs as a sort of mental link.
I had to fight her. I had to block her out. But how could I do that when my entire world felt like it was crumbling around me?
This isn’t real, I told myself. Snap out of it, dude!
Beside me, Violet began to shriek, “He cheated on me! He CHEATED on me! HE’S A CHEATER! ” Clutching desperately at her tear-streaked face, she began flailing around on her back like an overturned turtle, and I realized (even through another tidal wave of grief) that her mind was snapping. If I didn’t do something—and do it quick—we were both goners.
But what?
Suddenly the answer slammed into me like a Mack truck: Maybe I couldn’t block La Llorona out of our minds, but I could stop the wailing at its source.
So that’s exactly what I did.
Jumping to my feet, I snatched the crystal ball from its stand on the table and shoved it into La Llorona’s open, screaming mouth.
It was like I’d hit the mute button on her vocal cords. Abruptly, her horrible wailing cut off, and what felt like a heavy blanket lifted off my mind. A heartbeat later, Violet stopped crying too. She pushed to her knees, looking dazed, confused.
“What the heck was that?” she breathed.
“No time to explain.” I didn’t waste a second. I darted past the choking psychic (who now looked like a cat trying to cough up a hair ball—back arched, her entire body rolling in spastic little fits) and searched for a hidden door behind the curtain.
“Charlie, what are you doing?” Violet shouted, undoing the locks and flinging open the front door.
And just as she did, I spotted a shiny silver knob poking through beads.
“One sec!” I twisted it. Yanked open the door. And nearly got trampled as a dozen little kids—the exact same ones from the photos—came stampeding out.
They pounded across the bungalow like a herd of buffalo and burst out the front door and into the night.
A moment later, a pair of huge gray rats fell through the roof of the tiny room and scurried out the door after the kids, chittering angrily. Apparently, the Crying Shack really did have a vermin problem.
“Hey, I just put them to bed!” La Llorona yelled at me—well, more like squeaked. The crystal ball was lodged halfway down her throat and now bulged there like a giant, glowing Adam’s apple. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to get twelve eight-year-olds to bed on time on a school night?!”
On the other side of the room, Violet was in full-on cheerleader mode, jumping up and down on her toes, frantically waving me over like I was a wide receiver sprinting down the sideline for the game-winning touchdown. “Charlie, c’mon!”
I started toward her—then stopped. One more thing. I hustled over to the wooden dresser and snagged a jar of tears. Hey, if the lady charged a thousand dollars a bottle, it had to be good for something, right?
As I pounded out the door after Violet, I heard La Llorona yell, “¡Hasta luego, mis niños! I’ll be thinking of you!”
• • •
“Now, that was a close call,” I said as we started back through the musty swamp. “Dang, and I forgot my complimentary pj’s.”
Violet gave me a funny look.
“What? Those things looked comfy as heck.”
She laughed. “Yeah, and I’m already missing those breakfast croquetas. . . .”
“Oh man, those sounded good, didn’t they?”
“Really good.” Violet slowed down a little, then hopped over a large puddle of black water. I went around it, walking over a bridge of mangrove roots. “But you know what’s even tastier than croquetas?” she said.
“What?”
“All that juicy info Señora L was spilling.”
“What are you talking about? Like what?”
“Well, now we know about La Liga de Sombras. And we have a name—Queen Joanna.”
“And what are we supposed to do with that? I really don’t think anyone she knows is going to be on Facebook.”
Violet turned to smile at me. “Probably not. But I’ll run it through the AMM later tonight.”
“The what?”
“It’s the database the FBI runs names and phrases through.” When I made a face, she said, “My uncle works for the Bureau. I hacked his password—silly man uses the same seven letters and two numbers for every single log-in. Even his Netflix account.”
Twenty minutes later we emerged from the swamp and started along the tree-choked shoulder of the road, heading south on Krome. Considering the fact that we had found our way back pretty much by feel, we’d actually come out impressively close to where we’d first spotted La Luz Mala—the little shopping mall was only fifteen blocks or so down the narrow two-lane street, a brightly lit square sitting on the edge of nowhere.
“So, when do you wanna try the tears out?” Violet asked, taking the jar and swirling the clear liquid. “I hope it’s not something dangerous. . . .”
“I could try them tonight,” I said. “Any idea how they might work?”
“Not really. But nothing a little trial and error shouldn’t be able to solve.”
“We should probably do it back at your house, though. You know, just in case it is dangerous.” Like if it turned out to be pure, unfiltered acid and started burning through my fingers the instant it touched my skin.
“And you should probably hold on to them too,” I said with a smirk, “for safety reasons.”
She gave me a sideways grin. “Nice to hear you’re so concerned with my well-being.”
When we got within half a block of the strip mall, I saw two older-looking kids on bicycles ride out from behind the body shop. They wore tank tops and flip-flops, and even though they were pretty far away and getting farther, I could clearly see they were way too big for the bikes they rode, and I had a moment of panic, thinking they’d jacked us.
Heart pounding, I ran out wide to get an angle on the spot where we’d left our bikes—
And that was when I saw her.
That was when I saw my mom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
She was standing by the body shop, right next to our bikes (which hadn’t been stolen, after all). Her back was to me, but I instantly recognized her brown, sun-kissed skin and the small butterfly tattoo near her ankle. Her hair, just like always, was a dark red color that made me think of dried chilies.
It would be impossible to describe what I felt right then, because I’d never felt anything like it before. It was like a volcano was erupting inside me—a hot liquid explosion of shock, relief, and joy all mixed into one. There was no way I could keep it in.
“Mom!” I burst out. “¡Mami!”
“Your mom’s here?” Violet asked, sounding shocked. “Where?”
“That’s her—by the car place!” I broke into an automatic sprint. “Mami, over here! Mom!”
At that point, I expected her to turn around. I expected her to see me coming, shout my name, and start running toward me with her arms flung open, crying hysterically. Only that didn’t happen. Instead she wandered into the alley behind the mall like she hadn’t even heard me.
I’m going to lose her! The horrifying thought swept through my mind like a whirlwind as my sneakers furiously pounded the pavement. I’m going to lose her all over again!
But the second I turned the corner, I let out a huge sigh of relief. My mom had stopped between the buildings and now stood facing the back wall of the alley, by a dumpster. Weird, sure, but I figured she must’ve been waiting for me or something.
