Charlie Hernández & the League of Shadows

by Ryan Calejo

  Yeah, I was smiling again. Couldn’t help it. “Are you saying I’m odd?”

  She crinkled her nose. “Maybe just a little.”

  A moment of silence. Then I said, “Anyway, you got yourself a pedal partner now.”

  Violet nodded slowly, her eyes locked on mine. “Yeah, I think I do. . . .”

  I held the bike as she flipped up the kickstand with her foot. “So, where are we gonna try the tears?”

  “I know just the place,” she said, hopping on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  It took us fifteen minutes to ride over to the little park by Vizcaya, and by the time we got there it was so dark I couldn’t see the swing set, the slide, or even the gazebos and pine trees by the seawall. We leaned the bike up against one of the concrete benches and got to work.

  “All right, let’s do this,” Violet said, bringing the jar out of her purse. The wooden cork made a nice, satisfying POP! as she yanked it out of the bottle. I didn’t smell any noxious fumes, which I figured was a pretty good start. “Ready?”

  “Yeah, but how do you think it works?”

  “Well, La Llorona said that her tears lead people to where the universe wants to take them, right? But I don’t think she meant that in the literal sense.” She held up the jar. “I mean, tears can’t lead people. . . . They’re just tears. So, what I’m thinking is that they might give you a vision or something.”

  I wasn’t quite sure where she was going with this. “So you’re saying I should . . . ?”

  “Splash them in your eyes.”

  “Splash them in my eyes?”

  She nodded and offered me the jar.

  “Kinda gross, no?”

  “Sure, but you got any better ideas?”

  I sighed. I didn’t. “Perfecto.” Slipping off the oven mitt, I traded it to Violet for the jar. Then I dipped a couple fingers into the cold, murky liquid (hoping to still have them when I pulled them back out—which, thankfully, I did), tipped my head back, and hovered my now dripping fingers over my eyes, trying to score a hit.

  The first few drops were total air balls. (I got myself on the bridge of the nose once and sent the others streaking down my temples.) But the fifth one splashed directly onto my pupil—and with it came a burst of stinging pain.

  I flinched, hard, rubbing at my eye with the back of my hand, and the stupid jar slipped right out of my claw. I didn’t need to see what happened next because I heard it shatter as it hit the sidewalk and felt the splash against my sneakers.

  “You okay?” I heard Violet ask.

  “No.”

  A second later, I realized it wasn’t the tear that had stung me; it was some kind of bug. A gnat, probably. I could feel it in there—the hump of its tiny exoskeleton stuck to the underside of my eyelid. The little sucker must’ve flown into my eye at the exact same moment the tear had gone in.

  “Got a bug in there,” I said, still rubbing.

  “Hopefully, you got a tear in there too,” she said, “because we’re going to have to make another visit to the Crying Shack to get any more.”

  My heart sank as I glanced down to see the puddle of La Llorona’s tears glittering dully on the gray cement.

  “Well, did you?” she asked.

  “Yeah, I got one.”

  “And does anything look different to you?”

  I closed my other eye to check. “Everything looks a bit—watery. . . .”

  “Maybe we need to give it a sec,” she said.

  So we did; we waited. A few seconds went by. Then a minute. I watched an old beat-up minivan trundle past. The traffic light at the corner changed from green to yellow to red and then back again. Violet stared at her watch, tapping her foot impatiently.

  After about another thirty seconds or so, I threw my hands up. “Nothing’s happening,” I said. “The tears don’t do anything.” Honestly, it was frustrating; I’d kind of risked life and limb for that jar. But, really, what did I expect? They were just tears.

  “It’s okay,” Violet said, but she looked a little disappointed herself. “Doesn’t matter. Yesterday when I ran La Liga de Sombras through the FBI’s database, I got some interesting returns. We should be good to go.” She frowned.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Well, I have the addresses on my phone, but unfortunately, we’re going to have to take the tandem back to my house.”

  “Why?”

  “Because both places are pretty far. I’ll call us an Uber or something.”

  Just then I became aware of a strange sound . . . like water sloshing inside a half-filled balloon. At first I thought it was coming from the little pond. But then I looked down and my eyeballs nearly popped out of their sockets.

  La Llorona’s tears—which had been splattered all over the place just a second ago—had formed into two long quivering streaks on the sidewalk. They looked like a pair of fat, liquid caterpillars. And the craziest part? They were moving . . . sort of wriggling their way up the sidewalk, along the edge of the grassy path.

  “Uh, are you seeing this . . . ?” I asked Violet.

  “Seeing w—” She broke off, her eyes growing to the size of Frisbees. “Oh my God . . .”

  We both looked at each other, sly grins beginning to creep across our faces.

  I said, “I guess she really meant it when she said the tears lead you, huh?”

  • • •

  La Llorona might’ve been one crazy mamá, but her tears were without a doubt some of the most useful ever shed on planet Earth. They led us clear across town, past two busy shopping malls, through an endless, tree-lined maze of high-rises that sat on the edge of Biscayne Bay, and across a wide, eight-lane intersection, all without evaporating or being absorbed by the concrete. Fifteen minutes later, when they halted at the bus stop right across from Bayfront Park, we were pretty sure our liquid GPS had gassed out. But then a bus pulled up, and they climbed aboard using a sort of liquidy Slinky-like maneuver that had the toy company’s catchy little jingle playing in my head: “It’s Slinky, it’s Slinky, the favorite of girls and boys.” For a second Violet and I just stood there, too stunned to do anything but stare. I mean, we’d seen a lot of crazy stuff in the last few days—a lot—but this was right at the top of that list. Fortunately, we managed to snap out of it pretty quick, squeeze our two-seater onto the bus’s one-size-too-small bicycle rack, and then squeeze ourselves through the closing accordion doors before our not-so-friendly Haitian driver yelled something in Creole (or maybe it was French) and put pedal to metal.

  The bus wasn’t too full—maybe five or six people spread out over the thirty or so benches. We took a seat near the front, directly behind the tears, which had paused, not so inconspicuously, in the center of the aisle, just on the other side of the white DO NOT CROSS line. Surprisingly, none of the passengers seemed to notice them—well, no one except for a dazed-looking homeless dude who stared at them from under the bill of his grimy Dolphins cap for almost a full minute before shaking his head and dozing off. Apparently, he’d seen weirder things in Miami.

  Maybe twenty stops later (honestly, I lost count after, like, twelve), the twin salty streaks slinked their way silently off the bus, and we hopped on our bike and followed their glittery, snail-like trail around a corner and up a nice quiet street lined with tall palm trees and short black mangroves. There were apartment complexes to our left, large, freshly mowed fields to our right. At the end of the block, the tears turned right, and we eventually wound up in a small parking lot with a churchy-looking building on one side and a huge, rectangular archway guarded by a wrought-iron gate on the other. Through the archway, beyond a vast garden dotted with trees and large stone statues, I could see what appeared to be another building—some sort of old Spanish monastery.

  “I think we’re here,” I said, glancing around. “Wherever here is . . .”

  Sitting on a folding chair in front of the archway was a rent-a-cop in a dark blue uniform. He rose as we approached, completely unaware tha
t close to a thousand bucks’ worth of magical tears had just slipped soundlessly between his legs and through the fence.

  “Hi. Can we go in?” Violet asked.

  The rent-a-cop limped over, shaking his head like he hadn’t heard her. Up close, I could see he had big, almost bulging eyes set a little too far apart and papery-pale skin, probably from working late nights and sleeping through most of the day. Dude needed a tan. Badly. “What was that?”

  “Um, we just wanted to visit,” I explained, trying to sound friendly.

  “Do you have an invitation?” he asked. When we shook our heads, he crossed his arms over his barrel of a chest. “Then you can’t come in. The monastery’s closed anyway. Come back during regular visiting hours.”

  “But we just wanted to take a quick look around,” Violet said. “It’s for, uh, a school project. . . .”

  The guard’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t care if it’s for the FIFA World Cup. I told you we’re closed. Now, I’m gonna give you two exactly three seconds to split before things get ugly.” Then he barked at us. Yeah, barked. Like a dog. I guess he thought that might intimidate us.

  “Olvídalo,” I whispered to Violet. “Forget it. He’s not gonna let us in. Let’s roll.”

  So we showed him our rear reflectors and pedaled into the grassy field that sat to the left of the monastery, cruising along a chain-link fence like a couple of Depression-era kids on our state-of-the-art 1930s tandem.

  When we’d gone a little ways, I hopped off the bike and peered into the lot, trying to find another way in.

  “So, what do you want to do?” Violet asked.

  “Looks like we’re gonna have to jump the fence,” I said. It really was the only way; the monastery was surrounded on all sides—far away by a low cement wall, closer by this fence.

  She gave me a funny look. “You’ve obviously never worn a gown before.”

  “Does look a little constricting, now that you mention it. . . .”

  “Yeah, and in all the wrong places.” Violet slapped a hand to her forehead. “Can’t believe I forgot to pack my trusty pair of wire cutters!”

  “Wait. You have a trusty pair of wire cutters . . . ?”

  She nodded. “I usually keep them in my backpack. You won’t believe how handy those things are.”

  “Yo tengo una mejor idea,” I said. I slipped off the oven mitt and clacked my claw together a few times. “Who needs wire cutters when you got these bad boys?”

  • • •

  The chain link was tougher than it looked—I had to really put some muscle into each snip—but less than five minutes later, I had cut us a medium-size opening at the bottom of the fence. Pleased with my work, I glanced up at Violet. “Whatd’ya think?”

  “You’re a natural, Charlie. What can I say?”

  “I’ll go first to make sure there’s nothing to mess up your dress or whatever.”

  “Muchas gracias.”

  I was about to start crawling when I heard someone shout behind me. “Hey, you two! Get away from the fence!”

  I turned and saw the guard racing up the sidewalk toward us, his walkie-talkie in one hand, a long black flashlight in the other.

  “I’ll handle him,” Violet said, bringing a can of pepper spray out of her purse.

  “Um . . . he’s a pretty big guy, V.”

  “I’ve sprayed bigger.”

  As if taking offense to that, the guard gave a hellish shriek and leapt forward, diving headfirst into the empty air. There was a loud, tearing sound as his uniform exploded—like, literally exploded—and a mass of mangled black fur shot out from his body. Something between a canine and a demented Thoroughbred (I couldn’t really see it as a man anymore—not after it nearly tripled in size and its once-human face elongated into a thick, furry muzzle), it flew through the air with the grace of a ballerina, then hit the ground in full stride, sending tremors through the pavement and slinging ribbons of foam from between its rows of razor-sharp teeth.

  “Still sprayed bigger?” I asked. As I gaped wide-eyed at the beast, a creepy feeling of déjà vu settled over me. There was something so familiar about the dark, hungry eyes, the flying drool, the massive fur-covered body. I’d seen this thing before. . . . But where?

  Then the creature looked straight at me, its red eyes glowing, and my heart skipped a beat. It was a nahual! My abuela must’ve told me twenty different stories about these things. The most famous one involved a band of travelers who were attacked one night on a dark country road by an enormous black dog that robbed them of their possessions. As legend had it, one of the travelers shot the animal during the scuffle, but when they tried to track it, following the trail of its blood, they came upon a richly appointed hut, where they found a peasant tending to a leg wound. The travelers eventually gave up on the search for the dog and returned to the nearest village, where they were told that the man they had seen in the hut was actually a nahual—a shape-shifting sorcerer.

  “Let me guess,” Violet said. “You recognize him too?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Another creature from Hispanic mythology?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Any idea why we would keep running into things like this?”

  “Nuh-uh. But we should probably run.”

  Without another word, Violet dove for the opening in the fence and started to shimmy her way through. I waited my turn, heart flopping around in my chest, but couldn’t stop myself from looking back at the creature. It was less than fifty yards away now and closing fast, glowing red eyes wild, silver moonlight flashing off its mangled coat as it charged up the sidewalk. Dang, that thing was fast!

  “Charlie!”

  Violet’s scream snapped my head back around.

  “What’s wrong?” I started to say. Then I saw the problem: The hem of her dress had gotten caught on the chain link; she was yanking on it desperately with both hands, but it wouldn’t come free.

  “It’s stuck!” she cried.

  Crud, crud, crud. Not good. NOT good.

  “On it!” With frantic fingers, I attacked the dress—picking, plucking, pulling (I even tried bending the chain link), but nothing worked. Fear squirmed through me like something alive and slimy. My eyes flew back to the nahual. Only thirty yards away now, looming closer and closer. In less than three seconds, we were gonna become monster chow.

  “Charlie, do something!” Violet screamed. So I did the only thing I could: I snipped off the piece of her dress that had gotten caught in the fence with my claw. (Yeah, yeah, I know. You never—never, ever, ever—mess with a girl’s fancy party dress. But I really didn’t think she would mind in this case.)

  Now free, Violet scrambled the rest of the way through the hole. Then she whirled, shot a hand toward me, and shouted, “Take it!”

  But I never got a chance. Because just as I reached for her, something rough and slimy wrapped itself around my ankle with a loud, wet slurp—and pulled.

  My legs were suddenly swept out from under me. I belly flopped onto the pavement, the breath exploding out of my lungs in a big whoosh. The world lurched around me, and next thing I knew, I was being dragged rapidly down the sidewalk, my arms and legs flailing, fingers scrabbling madly at the cracks between the slabs of concrete. Then I threw a terrified look over my shoulder and finally realized what was going on: The creature had me lassoed with its nasty purple tongue!

  “GRRRRROOOSSSSS!” I screamed, kicking and struggling, but the thing’s floppy wet flavor-taster was ridiculously strong and ridiculously grippy. Like an octopus tentacle. No way I could fight myself free. Not even close.

  Behind me, I could hear Violet rattling the fence like a crazy woman. “Let go! ” she shouted. “Let him go! ”

  I saw her drop to her knees like she was going to crawl back to my side and screamed, “VIOLET, NO!”

  “THEN HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME TO HELP?” she screamed back, and in that same instant the shape-shifter’s tongue tightened painfully around my ankle. Numbness blossome
d up my leg, and I cried out, twisting my body and stomping on its tongue with the heel of my other foot, but it didn’t do anything; the creature just kept reeling me in, faster and faster, toward its gaping, razor-lined jaws.

  This close, I could feel the intense heat pouring off the thing, could hear a low, almost rattlesnake-like hiss coming from deep inside the dark wet tunnel of its throat. The horrible stink of its breath washed over me—something between a pair of three-week-stale gym shorts and spoiled milk.

  I can’t believe I’m going to die like this, I thought. Eaten alive on some sidewalk in North Miami Beach by a creature that shouldn’t even exist!

  “Violet, run!” I shouted. “¡Vete! Get out of he—”

  The walkie-talkie the nahual had dropped on the sidewalk suddenly crackled to life. There was a sharp, high-pitched squeal, followed by a furious female voice:

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING, PERRO CALLEJERO?” the voice raged. “YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO LET THE CHILDREN INTO THE MONASTERY, NOT INTO YOUR BELLY! HAVE YOU ONCE AGAIN FORGOTTEN WHAT SIDE YOU FIGHT FOR?”

  The nahual abruptly released my leg. Backing fearfully away from the walkie-talkie, it covered its face with one of its great black paws and whined deep in its throat, as if trying to apologize to whoever was on the other end.

  But the lady was having none of it. “¡ALÉJATE! GET AWAY FROM THE CHILD!” she roared, and suddenly the ferocious beast (once ferocious, anyway) tucked its long fuzzy tail between its legs in terror and bounded off into the night, vanishing from sight.

  For a moment I was too stunned to blink, much less get up and run. But I definitely wasn’t about to just lie there and wait for that thing to change its mind about making me dinner. Scrambling to my feet, I hustled back over to the fence, scuttled through the opening, then nearly got leveled as Violet slammed into me, wrapping me up in a huge hug.

  “Oh my God!” she shouted, crushing me with that trademark cheerleader strength. “You’re okay!”